At four o’clock, Samson came in from the door and told Rhea that Sol was expecting her in the kitchen.
“Who’s Sol?” she asked.
“The pastry chef.” He was already stepping behind the desk to take her place.
“You don’t keep Sol waiting.”
Rhea hadn’t eaten anything since the afternoon, so she went gladly.
She took the service stairs down to the basement, where the pastry kitchen was warm and smelled of butter.
A woman in her fifties, with flour up to her elbows, was taking trays out of the oven.
This had to be Sol, though she didn’t introduce herself or ask Rhea’s name.
She barely glanced at Rhea as she nodded toward a stool by the long steel table.
“Sit.”
When Rhea sat down, Sol put a mug of tea in front of her and went back to her dough.
After a whole day of answering questions, it was a relief to be with someone who didn’t ask any, though Rhea found it a little strange.
For the first time that night, she felt at ease there, the stress of the day starting to fade as she held that warm cup in her hands.
After a while, Sol set a plate down beside the mug.
On it was a slice of apricot tart.
“Eat.”
This time Sol stayed on the other side of the table, wiping her hands on a cloth, and watched Rhea for a long while.
Rhea assumed Sol was waiting for her opinion.
The first bite tasted exactly like the apricot tart her mother used to bake on Sundays.
It had the same sweetness, without being overpowering, and the same fruity aroma she remembered from her childhood.
Her throat immediately closed, and she had to put the fork down.
She took a sip of tea she didn’t even want, just to give her hands something to do, then kept her eyes on the plate until she was sure her face wouldn’t give anything away.
When she finally looked up, Sol’s eyes were openly studying Rhea’s face.
“It’s very good,” Rhea said, once she could trust her voice.
“Eat,” Sol said again and turned back to her oven.
Rhea wanted to ask where the recipe had come from.
As far as she knew, her mother had never given it to anyone.
But asking would tell Sol that she’d eaten this same sort of tart before, and from there it wouldn’t be hard to work out whose daughter she was.
So she picked up the fork and finished the slice, since leaving it on the plate would only make Sol wonder more.
Sol kept her back turned while Rhea ate.
When Rhea stood up to go, Sol spoke without looking up from her work.
“Four o’clock. Tomorrow.”
It sounded more like an order than an invitation.
Rhea thanked her and went out.
She couldn’t tell whether Sol had recognized something about her, and that feeling of uncertainty was something she didn’t like one bit.
She would have to come back tomorrow anyway, since staying away would only look stranger.
She didn’t go straight back to the desk.
Samson could watch it for a while longer, and the hotel would never be quieter than it was now.
When she reached the ground floor, she kept on climbing.
Her mother had taught her the hotel’s back ways as a game when she was small, timing how quickly she could cross the whole building without a single guest seeing her.
Rhea had assumed she’d forgotten them by now, but apparently her instincts were still there.
Crossing the third floor, she heard a door open somewhere ahead and slipped into a linen room without thinking.
Only when the footsteps had gone by did she remember that she worked here now and had every right to be in the hallway.
She felt a little foolish standing there among the folded sheets, though part of her was pleased that she could still go unnoticed when she wanted to.
She hadn’t expected to find so much of her past still in the building, first in Sol’s recipe and now in the back stairs.
It made the Voss feel almost like home, and that was the last thing she wanted from it.
On the seventh floor, the lights had been turned low, and the carpet was so thick that she couldn’t hear her own steps.
The chairman’s office was at the far end, behind a pair of tall doors.
Rhea only looked at them and told herself that room would have to wait for now.
Between her and the office, a Do Not Disturb sign hung from the handle of 707.
That was nothing unusual at this hour, though she was curious who was sleeping on the chairman’s floor.
She took the room list out of her pocket and unfolded it.
Room 707 was paid for through the end of December, with a note asking housekeeping not to go in.
It was booked under the name E.
Vidal.
Rhea knew that name.
Only the night before, she had broken into his mansion.
So the man who had the ring had also booked a room at the Voss, just down the hall from Victor Voss’s office.
Rhea didn’t believe that was a coincidence.
Not to mention that Vidal had been dead for a month, and yet the room was still paid for, and nobody allowed inside.
The master keys were in her pocket.
She could come back another night with a better reason to be on this floor, or she could look now, while the whole hotel was asleep.
She told herself she would only look and touch nothing, then took out the keys.
She had just found the right one when the Birdcage began to rise somewhere below her.
She expected it to stop at another floor, but it kept climbing until it reached the seventh.
Gus folded the gate open and looked out at her from beside the lever.
His eyes went to the keys in her hand, then back to her face.
“707 is a Do Not Disturb room, miss,” he said.
“Some doors are not meant to be disturbed.”
Despite those words, it sounded more like advice from someone who knew that door far better than she did.
She wondered, though, how he’d even known where to find her.
He held the gate open and waited.
With him watching, there was no question of opening that door anymore, so Rhea put the keys back in her pocket and stepped into the lift.